This invention relates generally to display of an electronic program guide (EPG) on a television screen. More particularly, this invention relates to a method for programming and editing entries in the EPG.
Electronic program guides are the electronic equivalent of a printed television program guide, such as TV Guide®, but they are potentially more customizable. Generally, EPGs display on a television screen a schedule of programs accessible to the television and may include a short summary or commentary for each program. More sophisticated EPGs are used with digital set-top boxes (STBs) and newer television sets, and allow a user to control a VCR or to use the STB as a VCR.
In a conventional EPG, program data are listed in columns (or fields), with headings such as Date, Channel, Program Title, and Summary. For user-interactive program data, such as that associated with VCR recording, a program reminder, or a time block, column headings may include Channel, Day, Start, and Stop. The data in each of these columns are generally chosen by the user based on the program the user wants to record or watch. However, because of space constraints on the television screen, not all of the pertinent information is displayed. For example, only the channel number may be displayed rather than the channel number and name, only the day of the month and abbreviation of the day of the week may be displayed (e.g., “12(Fr)”) rather than the full date (“Friday, Jul. 12, 2002”), or only “a” or “p” is displayed rather than “AM” or “PM.” In addition, in order to fit even this limited amount of information on the screen, the font may be smaller than visually desirable.
Compensation for inadequate display space in a display window is disclosed in a non-EPG context. U.S. Pat. No. 5,943,053 involves a window on a computer screen made up of subwindows. When a user places a pointer, such as a mouse, in a subwindow having text wider than the width of the subwindow that is thereby obscured by the adjacent subwindow, the obscured subwindow is widened to show all of the text, thereby obscuring the adjacent subwindow. When the user removes the mouse from the subwindow, the subwindow contracts to the original width.
This compensation system is limited, however, because it does not take into account the font size or readability of the text. Thus, if the text in the obscured subwindow is hard to read because the font size is too small, widening the subwindow will not make the text much easier to read. Another reference, U.S. Pat. No. 6,344,865, discloses in the context of a graphical user interface the ability to enlarge font types when viewing the interface from a distance.